Nutrition: Women and Girls

Lord Bates Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in paying tribute to my noble friend Lady Manzoor for securing this debate. The subject is dear to heart. She has devoted her professional life to it and brings that experience into your Lordships’ House. Her convening of the round table before Christmas enabled an exchange of views with the DfID officials who attended and was helpful in shaping our policy in relation to this issue. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, and the noble Lord, Lord Collins, for their thoughtful contributions from the Labour Benches on these matters. They rightly pointed out that nutrition is the basis, the building block, for all other development. It is crucial, not only in the sustainable development goals but as a woman’s issue in the lead-up to International Women’s Day.

As an aside—I hope the House will bear with me—I am particularly disappointed that we have not heard from the Liberal Democrats; in fact there is no one on their Benches. Normally I would not make reference to that but, because I have had some extra information as to why that may be the case, I want to put on record that this is an important issue that is central to development and we should focus on it and make sure our voices are heard.

Malnutrition still affects one in three people globally. It is holding back the growth and development of both people and countries. Women affected by undernutrition are more likely to give birth to small babies, and those babies will be disadvantaged throughout their lives. Undernourished children are more likely to die young, contributing to 45% of all under-five deaths. Children who survive do less well at school, have 10% lower lifetime earnings and are more likely to have undernourished children themselves.

The economic consequences of undernutrition in affected countries represents a loss to GDP of 10% year on year, whereas every pound spent on reducing stunting has an estimated £50 to £60 return in increased incomes and economic growth. Therefore, tackling malnutrition is critical to reaching at least 11 or 12 of the global goals. Eradicating disease, ending extreme poverty and empowering women will happen only if they are free from malnutrition. A healthy, prosperous and stable world is much less likely while malnutrition persists.

Nutrition is a long-term development challenge and an immediate humanitarian challenge. In 2017 the world is facing unprecedented humanitarian needs. A famine in South Sudan was declared today, along with Her Majesty’s Government’s response to it. It is a call to arms for the international community to respond much more effectively and urgently to the challenge already in South Sudan and just around the corner in Somalia, north-east Nigeria and Yemen. The international community must get much more to the forefront of these issues. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, said, we can rightly be proud of the fact that the UK is leading in this area. We support the comments and remarks of the Secretary of State, Priti Patel, made today to the international community.

UK aid on the ground is saving lives. Now we are calling on the international community to step up its support. The longer we wait, the higher the price humanity will have to pay. For all these reasons, improving the nutrition of women, girls and children in general is a top priority for our work in developing countries. It is for these reasons that at the Nutrition for Growth summit in 2013, to which my noble friend Lady Manzoor and the noble Lord, Lord Collins, referred, we pledged to invest more in programmes that address both the immediate and underlying causes of malnutrition. It is for these reasons that in 2015 the Government committed to the nutrition of 50 million people—women, girls and children—globally by 2020.

Delivering this result will be a priority for DfID, with a focus on quality and value for money. I am pleased to say that we are on track to do that, thanks to the work we are doing to scale up on nutrition across the 20 priority countries that we have identified. More broadly, we are far from complacent. In the coming months my right honourable friend the Secretary of State will launch a new UK position paper on nutrition. This will set out further accelerated and intensified action. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, invited me to say a little more about what the financial resource behind that might be. Like me, he will have to be patient to see that coming forward, but I hope that it will be something where, as on so many things, there is cross-party support.

Our new approach will be built on the latest evidence. This shows clearly that there is a basic package of things that need to be done to most effectively tackle malnutrition. This includes vitamin A and zinc supplements for children, maternal micronutrient and calcium supplementation, breast-feeding promotion—which the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, referred to—education around complementary feeding, and specific management of severe acute malnutrition, the most life-threatening form of malnutrition.

The evidence also points towards focusing on both girls and boys under five years, as this is when malnutrition is most likely, has the biggest impact on children’s future potential, and can be most easily prevented. It is also increasingly clear that, for maximum impact, we need to focus more on adolescent girls—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Collins, and my noble friend Lady Manzoor—both for their own benefit and to prevent malnutrition in future generations.

As my noble friend Lady Manzoor articulated so clearly, we need to ensure that the wider DfID portfolio—be it health, water, agriculture, or economic development programmes—is addressing malnutrition at the same time as hitting other objectives. Our recently published Economic Development Strategy commits us to do this very thing, and we are now specifically looking at how we can go further in integrating nutrition into health. This multisectoral approach not only delivers better results; it also represents better value for money. Delivering multiple outcomes through our programmes maximises the impact of every pound spent.

While tackling undernutrition will remain DfID’s primary nutrition focus, failing to consider overweight and obesity will leave many countries with a costly public health problem in the future. DfID will therefore also identify ways to avert overweight and obesity through our work on undernutrition in low-income countries, making the most of UK expertise in this area. Preventing undernutrition itself will play a role, as undernourished children are at increased risk of being overweight, of obesity and of related non-communicable diseases in adulthood.

As I have outlined, nutrition is a top priority for DfID’s work. However, the UK acting alone cannot of course rid the world of malnutrition. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, rightly pointed this out and stressed the importance of working with our European partners. At present, we continue to do that through the European Development Fund. In future, we will continue to work with them through the many multilateral institutions in which we have a shared position, involvement and concern.

Inequalities in malnutrition are also increasing. Girls, excluded ethnic groups, children with disabilities and displaced people—some examples of whom the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, referred to in respect of her visit to India—and those living in fragile and conflict-affected states are particularly affected. The new UK position paper will therefore also set out our determination to galvanise the international and business communities to follow our own leadership on nutrition. We will specifically ask countries which are home to large numbers of undernourished people to set out quality, multisectoral plans and financial commitments to tackle undernutrition. We will continue to support the Scaling Up Nutrition movement, by contributing to the costs of the secretariat and by providing assistance to Governments within the movement to improve their nutrition programming.

We will seek new commitments from businesses, which have a crucial role in improving both supply of and demand for nutritious food. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, raised a good point about potential conflicts of interest within the food industry. We are supporting the development of guidelines to ensure responsible behaviour by businesses on nutrition, working with Access to Nutrition Index to promote improvement in business practice.

We will lobby other potential global funders of work against malnutrition to step forward and step up, including through the Power of Nutrition financing facility. And we will call on our multilateral partners to up their game, focusing more sharply on supporting Governments to develop and implement their own national nutrition plans.

To advance this agenda, the UK will play a leading role in a series of global nutrition events throughout 2017. Starting with a global call to action at the World Bank spring meetings in April, there will be moments for each group of stakeholders to make new commitments at that point.

Lastly, we will invest to ensure there are better data—a point raised in the debate, and the point about disaggregation of data was particularly well-made—to measure the impact of our own and others’ efforts, and to ensure that we and others can be held to account for delivery.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Manzoor for raising this timely debate, and for the expertise she brings. I am grateful also for the contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Collins, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, on this crucial issue. We will continue to work with civil society and the private sector, to get the world back on track and make sure we achieve Global Goal 2 by 2030, and leave no one behind.

House adjourned at 7.36 pm.